Marquette Literary Review Issue 3, Spring 2011
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Marquette Literary Review Issue 3 Spring 2011 Emily Shackleton, General Editor Dr. Larry Watson, Consulting Editor Graydon Larson-Rolf, Fiction Editor Kira Boswell, Fiction Editor Michelle Decamp, Poetry Editor Liz Judy, Poetry Editor Photo by Liz Judy Marquette Literary Review Issue 3, Spring 2011 POETRY RING .................................................................................................................... 4 CHARLES MOHL BENEATH THE SOUTHERN SUN .................................................................................... 5 KAYLA WHITE A CHORUS OF AMBITION ........................................................................................... 9 ALEXANDRA BOYD OF PERCUSSION .................................................................................................... 10 CHARLES MOHL HIVES ................................................................................................................. 11 CHARLES MOHL BBQ .................................................................................................................. 12 ROSE GREGORY FOREMAN ............................................................................................................ 13 ANNA OLSON DELIVERY ............................................................................................................. 14 ROSE GREGORY LIONS IN THE RAIN ................................................................................................. 15 ALISON HANLEY SIC TRANSIT ......................................................................................................... 16 BRAD THARPE “TODAY I WON’T REPLY TO YOUR MESSAGES…” ............................................................ 17 JAHNAVI ACHARYA “WELL, IT’S TOMORROW…” ..................................................................................... 17 JAHNAVI ACHARYA HE CALLED HER PEACH ........................................................................................... 18 KIRA BOSWELL TRAVELER ............................................................................................................ 19 ALEXANDRA BOYD 2 Marquette Literary Review Issue 3, Spring 2011 PROSE FOR MY ________ : ............................................................................................. 20 ALISON HANLEY DELILAH .............................................................................................................. 22 ALLISON ELLSWORTH INERTIA ............................................................................................................... 31 KAYLA WHITE UNTITLED FICTION ................................................................................................. 46 CAROLINE CAMPBELL UNTITLED FICTION ................................................................................................. 48 ERIN KELLY I MET HER ON THE STAIRS ....................................................................................... 64 ANTHONY HOLLMAIER THE BARTENDER .................................................................................................... 71 ALISON HANLEY ON THE COURT ..................................................................................................... 74 MATTHEW SWEENEY NUMBER 30 ......................................................................................................... 89 MATTHEW BIN HAN ONG ON THROWING STONES .......................................................................................... 92 ANONYMOUS ZEPP’S DINER ....................................................................................................... 98 TIMOTHY GORICHANAZ All of the poems, stories and essays published in the Marquette Literary Review are self-expressions of those who created them and are not intended to represent the ideas or views of the MLR staff or its advisors; the Marquette faculty, staff, or administration; the student body; or any other group associated with Marquette University. Marquette Literary Review Website 3 Marquette Literary Review Issue 3, Spring 2011 POETRY Ring Charles Mohl Come. Saunter late with me into our wedding. We can laugh at the slack-jawed priest. Lift the veil; tell me what you’ve been dreading. Come. Help me burn our white linens and bedding, make a fortress of sweat without sheets. Come. Saunter late with me into our wedding. Mate, we sail straightest without any heading, though we’ve met hungry nautical beasts. Lift the veil; tell me what you’ve been dreading. There is no finer cure than bloodletting. It doesn’t hurt me in the least. Come. Saunter late with me into our wedding. And if we waver we won’t bother steadying. We’ll deflate like soufflé without yeast. Lift the veil; tell me what you’ve been dreading. They have come here to watch our beheading, drooling savages anxious to feast. Come. Saunter late with me into our wedding. Lift the veil; tell me what you’ve been dreading. RETURN 4 Marquette Literary Review Issue 3, Spring 2011 Beneath the Southern Sun Kayla White Just over the old cotton hill-- the Grave of Sighs, legend has it if you walk over it at night, you can hear the sighs of the slaves who poured their souls into the ground, or so they say. Past the Baptist church filled with ladies and their sweat soaked necks large flowered hats and even bigger mouths. Spilling out songs of the Holy Ghost. Inviting the Serpent in for gossip and cheap liquor when they get home. Beyond the oil fields with large hammers at work pumping liquid gold from the ground all hours of the day. Loading the bank of the person who found it but emptying ours. There is a clearing in the plains of wild indigo of waist-high grass soft dirt and copper winged cicadas who sing their song in the afternoon sun. Where the golden rods from the sky meet the hundred year old trees to cast a crisscross of shadows on the ground. 5 Marquette Literary Review Issue 3, Spring 2011 This is our place for our break in the 6 day work week. To drown our troubles with the buzzing of the electric wires, 40 feet in the air and satisfy our longing for the human touch. You free yourself from your faded gray t shirt you won behind Al’s diner in a fight with ‘No front teeth Tommy’. Protecting your honor and protecting your girl, and your blue jeans with the worn knees and sterling silver belt buckle, holding the same leather belt your dad used to teach you lessons. I hold the square in my hand and trace the markings on its face. My secondhand cotton dress from my older sister, who has longer legs and larger breasts, slips to the ground. I will never fill it the way she did. My feet escape my cowgirl boots. A whole week’s pay and I’d rather wiggle my toes in Earth’s red clay. The peeking Toms of the trees blush from our love’s expression. It’s just you, the perfect bait 6 Marquette Literary Review Issue 3, Spring 2011 for my soul’s thirst and hunger and I. The sky changes hue as I lie fitted in your arms. We stay until mosquitoes start to bite and tell us to go home. And when our bellies growl for a different hunger, hand in hand, we walk home. Sticky and sweaty with bits of dirt speckled against our skin, the only signs of what we’ve done, that summer Sunday beneath the Southern sun. RETURN 7 Marquette Literary Review Issue 3, Spring 2011 Anna Olson How beautiful it is to feel small when looking across the wild, weathered sea, or up at the full moon and our faraway companions, the stars. How unspeakable is the beautiful awe and fear conjured while huddled inside as forked lightning strikes the blue-gray clouds, and forceful thunder rattles the windows. To face a mountain and look up at the unreachable point, To face a waterfall and desire, with the most fervent of desires, to bathe in the shower of those forceful drops, To feel the first twinge of the womb, and know, someday, that a heartbeat apart from your own within your own body will delight and terrify you inspires a great and quiet joy. Others may yell with dark screams to the sky, “I am a knight, I am a king among men!” I watch and feel and whisper, I am small. I am small and I am nobody and nothing. I am small and I love my insignificance. RETURN 8 Marquette Literary Review Issue 3, Spring 2011 A Chorus of Ambition Alexandra Boyd I. We’re all horizons yearning toward the promise of a new day. with a voice like dawns blush, a persistent hush growing louder every hour. II. He said, “I hope you hear my name when you look at those stars because someday I’m gonna be up there soaking in celestial rays.” He said “I hope you blow a kiss to every spotlight.” My best friend swore she would save an entire continent from the pain of their revealed ribcages, as she penned a first draft of her grad school essay. She’s in love with everyone, insane sensational and brave. Meanwhile I want nothing more than a flock of words, a host of stories borrowed from imagination’s lips as she mumbles in her sleep. I will illuminate her darkest nights and coincidental mistakes. III. Believe us when we tell you that we yearn to be remembered as more than photographs. Believe us when we say we want to sit astride our future and guide the reins. 9 Marquette Literary Review Issue 3, Spring 2011 Of Percussion Charles Mohl Heart—Beat. Bash. Thunder—Clap. Crash. Why beginnings are jarring and rude: Nobody said it was a pretty business, being the cornerstone. We me must keep time, watching our wait, Dumb. as we fade quickly Dumb. from the foreground, Dumb. for granted. In wake of these daintier details, you must be much smarter than you think if you’re going